A man who broke his back as he tried to escape from a coach which crashed in the French Alps said today he feared he would be left paralysed.

Ed Billen was injured when he jumped from a smashed window as the coach exploded in a fireball, killing the driver, on Tuesday.

Hero driver Maurice Wrightson, 63, prevented many more deaths by swerving the vehicle into the mountainside to prevent it going over the edge of the cliff on final bend on the notorious twisting descent from the Alpe D’Huez resort.

Mr Billen, from Leyton, east London, was one of four seriously injured passengers out of 51 young ski resort staff who were travelling back to the UK.

Speaking from his hospital bed in Grenoble, the 23-year-old told the Standard how he desperately fought to get off the bus through a smashed window, but fell as he attempted to escape.

He said: “I was sitting in about the fourth or fifth row from the back and was dozing off when people began screaming. It happened in a matter of five or ten seconds.

“As soon as the bus crashed it burst into flames, I looked for an escape door, but there was none near me. People were panicking, then my mate smashed the window, and that was when I fell.”

Mr Billen fractured three vertebrae in his back and has had stitches in his left hand, elbow and his right foot.

He said: “I was struggling to get out of the window, and I fell badly. I thought I had split my head open at first but the adrenaline just drove me to get away from the coach - it really gave me the chance to get away. The next thing I remember I was asking my friends if they were okay, then I passed out.”

When he woke up, Mr Billen was unable to move.

“The doctors said I will make a full recovery, but I am finding it very difficult to walk. I had no idea what I had done when I woke up. The adrenaline had gone and the pain kicked in and I thought I wouldn’t be able to walk again,” he said.

Mr Billen said he was “hugely grateful” that the driver made he decision to drive the coach into the mountainside.

He added: “He was a hero, and saved us. I met him the night before we began the journey. We all had a meal together at the resort where I was staying. We only said a few words to each other, but he seemed like a really nice guy. I wish I had spoken to him more now. It’s so sad.”

Two other Britons remain in hospital in France. Catrin Pugh, a 19-year-old ski instructor, is believed to have been put in an artificial coma after the horror crash, and another unnamed 23-year-old woman, who suffered 80 per cent burns, remains in a critical condition.

A fourth man, 19-year-old Matthew Beauchamp, from Bristol, has been discharged form the hospital and returned to the UK with the other passengers.

The group, who had been working for British tour operator SkiBound, returned on a chartered Home Office flight on Wednesday.